Journalists’ Roundtable: Final insights on the Presidential election

Nov. 1

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable topics included:

Final campaign push
Election concerns: Delayed results
Election concerns: Two-page ballot
Election concerns: Order of election results
Election concerns: Security
General thoughts on the election

Final campaign push

Jeremy Duda: “We can’t even count how many visits we’ve had from presidential candidates, from the vice presidential candidates, from their surrogates and proxies over the past couple of weeks. They’ve all been here numerous times over the past month, since voting started, and it’s almost over.”

Camryn Sanchez: “There’s probably still some late breaking undecided. I think the Democrats are kind of, from what I’ve heard, very focused on them. I feel like that could break their way. And I mean, based on some of Trump’s comments last week, or comments other folks have made at rallies, and the Puerto Ricans’ comments last week that I know a lot of folks were very unhappy about, some of the the stuff from there.”

Election concerns: Delayed results

Jen Fifield: “First of all, eight o’clock is usually when we get something. We will get all early voted votes, up to Friday. I would expect the next batch to drop around 10:30 [p.m.], and start looking for some results.”

Duda: “The early ballot drop offs have been kind of hard to predict. For the last couple of elections, we’ve seen some kind of changing trends on how these work, but those are the last back out ends, because election workers have to verify those signatures on hundreds of thousands of ballots that get dropped off on election day. That takes a lot of time. The ballots cannot be counted or even separated from their envelopes until that happens. So this is where you get that 10- to 13-day wait to finalize the ballots.”